


"we'll figure it out."

by clickingkeyboards



Series: one hundred ways to say 'i love you' [36]
Category: Murder Most Unladylike Series - Robin Stevens
Genre: Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2019-12-06
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:48:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21718669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clickingkeyboards/pseuds/clickingkeyboards
Summary: Alexander panics. George is there to pick up the pieces.Canon EraWritten for the thirty-sixth prompt in the '100 ways to say "I love you"' prompt list by p0ck3tf0x on Tumblr.
Relationships: Alexander Arcady/George Mukherjee
Series: one hundred ways to say 'i love you' [36]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1533164
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	"we'll figure it out."

If you asked the masters at Weston, they would say that Alex is weak. I do not believe them in the slightest, despite all that has happened and all I have witnessed. Since First Year, I have been privy to Alex’s lowest moments whether he likes it or not.

There is something different about Alex, just as there is something different about me. There is something fleetingly nervous behind his charismatic exterior, a shake in his defiant voice and a tremor in his confident grip. He is overcome with rushes of horrifying panic that leave his chest heaving and him choking out tears for no reason that I can see, bouts of incomprehensible emotion that leave him shaking with his sadness soaking into the shoulder of my blazer.

Not that Alex could ever do me wrong by this. He cannot irritate me or rid himself of me if he tries, no matter how untimely his panic or how vicious his fight, and I make sure that he knows that I mean those things when I say them. Somehow, Alex could never do me wrong. These things are not his fault and I will defend him until the day I die. No matter what he does, I am there to hold his hands in the throes of panic and tell him to buck up afterwards.

Although I hate to admit it, I do hold him dear to me. He is my Alexander, my dear Alexander, and I will be by his side even when I am not wanted. 

Perhaps he will be sick of me before I am sick of him.

* * *

Judging by how to moonlight falls perfectly across my pillow, bathing my face in cool light, it is half-past one in the morning.

I wonder briefly what has woken me.

From the next bed, I hear a jarring breath and my gaze snaps to Alex, who is sat up with his head dropped onto his knees, which are pulled up against his chest. His shoulders heave up and down with a jerking irregularity, and his hands shake as he grips his trousers.

Before my mind can register the connection my heart has just made, I’ve flung myself out of my bed to creep over to Alexander’s, sitting on the side of it and cautiously placing a gentle hand on his back. Under my touch, he jumps and jerks and gasps out a hiccup before registering the contact.

“Hey there, Alex,” I whisper, curling my legs up onto his bed and shifting myself closer to him. “Alex, are you there?”

He moves away from me and it hurts my heart only a little, I tell myself. Instead of wallowing in that rejection, I move his crumpled covers aside and got underneath beside him. Once I’m underneath the quilt with Alex, I feel him shaking against me.

“Come here, my love,” I whisper, the words riding on a breath that is so hardly there it is almost mere possibility. To accompany the words, I hold out my arms. For a moment, we are frozen in that action: his enormous and terrified eyes fixed on my face as he cowers away from me while I am ready to take him in my arms and hold him until nothing is awful. The tension gives all at once as Alex flings himself at me, sobs harsh and catching in his throat once more.

I wrap my arms around him as tight as I can, bringing one hand up to cradle the back of his head. “Alex, my love. Are you there?”

A nod jerks against my shoulder, barely discernible from his shaking. “There, that’s good. You’re there. You’re doing well, Alex. Can you do something else for me?”

A frantic shake of his head this time, and I am immeasurably careful not to sigh. “Alright. No, it’s alright, my love. You haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Help. I can’t breathe, George. Help me, please. Please, help. I can’t— I can’t— I can’t breathe!” His voice climbs to hysterical heights that are near shrieks, so loud that I have to use the hand on the back of his head to dip his face into my collar, sobs muffled in my pyjamas.

“You have got to breathe, my love,” I order. Not unkindly, mind you, but certainly sharply. “Breathe with me, now. It’s an important thing to do, you know. I would prefer to kiss you while you are alive rather than give you the kiss of life. That is the only chance I have of kissing you in public, though, which I suppose is the only good part.”

My rambling, however nonsensical, calms Alex a good degree. His breath — albeit shuddering — begins to come under control once again and my heart swells with a warmth that fills me from head to toe: pride.

“Well done.”

“Don’t patronise me.”

“I’m _not_.” The two of us pause in silence before he speaks again.

“When I’m older, what shall we do? Nobody like this will ever go far.”

Leaning my head against his shoulder, I tell him, “How do you know? People do not disclose that they panic like this. Celebrities, the prime minister, the president, the actual _king_ , they all doubtless panic like you. We'll figure it out, Alex."

“I’ll break without you, George.” I feel as if my entire body has begun to burn when he says that. He _needs me_.

With a whisper of, “I am not going anywhere, my love,” I pull away from Alex so I can admire his tear-stained and rather blotchy features. “You look beautiful, Alex.”


End file.
